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Materials
Used In Inuit Sculpture

Inuit
artisans in Canada’s Arctic regions use raw materials that are found on
the land or from the sea along the coasts. Since there are no trees up
in the Arctic tundra, wood was never an option as a raw material for Inuit sculpture and art.
Instead, the Inuit artisans use whatever is in good supply locally.
Therefore for their Inuit sculpture, stone is the most common material
used followed by animal bone and ivory.

Stone
For Inuit Sculpture

Since
stone is the most common raw material for Inuit sculpture, this is what
the world usually sees from Inuit art. However, getting a good supply
of quality stone is not always easy for Inuit carvers. Quarries or
sites with good stone are not always located near the various
established Inuit communities. Inuit artists would often have to travel
together to the quarries by boat during the summer or by snowmobile
during the winter. Sometimes trips can take several days. Getting the
stone out of the land is hard physical labor since it has to be
extracted with tools such as picks and drills. The stone cannot be
simply blasted out with dynamite since blasting will damage the stone.
Once enough quality stone is extracted, the Inuit carvers would have to
transport the supply back to their communities.

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The
type of stone used for Inuit sculpture varies since each Arctic region
and even supply site will usually have different types of stone. The
general term ‘soapstone’ often used for Inuit sculpture is not exactly
accurate since most Arctic regions in fact do not have soapstone sites.
Soapstone (talc steatite), a relatively soft stone, is used in some but
not the majority of regions for Inuit sculpture.

The
most common stone used in Inuit sculpture are serpentine and
serpentinite which are harder than soapstone. As carving material,
serpentine and serpentinite are more difficult for Inuit carvers to
work with than compared to soapstone. These stone come in a variety of
different colors including green, brown, black and a range of shades in
between. Other types of Arctic stone used for Inuit sculpture include
marble, quartz, argillite, siltstone and dolomite. Examples of
different colors of Arctic stone are shown below.

Alabaster
and soapstone imported from other countries such as Brazil, Italy and
United States (Arizona) are sometimes used in Inuit sculpture. Many
Inuit art enthusiasts claim that Inuit sculpture made from foreign
stone are not as valuable as those made from indigenous Arctic stone.
Knowing that artwork made by indigenous Inuit artists who used their
local indigenous Arctic stone may be one of the overall appeals of
owning authentic Inuit
sculpture. However, some Inuit including David Ruben
Piqtoukun who is one of the most successful Inuit artists, use imported
stone on a regular basis. His artwork is world renowned and his use of
non-indigenous stone has not hurt his reputation or career at all. The
walrus below left was carved using a gold-brown Brazilian soapstone
with a marble inlay for the tusk.

Some pieces of Inuit sculpture will look more polished and shiny
compared to others. This is mostly due to regional Inuit art styles
since in some regions, Inuit carvers prefer a primitive, unpolished
look (see the example of the bird on the top right) while in other
regions a highly polished finish is preferred. For the polished look,
Inuit carvers use colored or clear shoe polish for the finishing
touches. Sometimes, beeswax is heated onto Inuit sculptures as an
alternative finish.